I concede that our language may be a little too “academic,” but consider that we coordinated this across borders, languages, holiday calendars, and extremely busy schedules. And it’s important to speak up for our shared humanity, for a scholarly community that transcend national borders, for free and open inquiry.

Press Release: Current Global Politics Limit Academic Freedom

On Universal Children’s Day, November 20, 2017, the International Research Society for Children’s Literature (IRSCL) issues a Statement of Principles, because it is worried about the ways in which contemporary geopolitics curtail academic freedom.

This summer, IRSCL convened its 23rd biennial congress in Canada. More than 20 percent of the scholars whose papers were accepted were unable to attend Congress 2017, not only because of radical economic disparities in the world but also because of current restrictive travel policies and the “chill” caused by them.

IRSCL finds the current xenophobic situation worrying as it curtails academic freedom. The free flow of people and ideas across borders has to be defended anew, says Elisabeth Wesseling, President of IRSCL.
For this reason, IRSCL will issue a Statement of Principles, which explains why scholarship can flourish only in a world with open borders. The statement will be released as a collection of videos featuring IRSCL members reading the statement in their native language

the statement is issued on November 20, Universal Children’s Day, to emphasize not only the importance of our research, but also of children’s literature’s potential to foster empathy, nurture creativity, and imagine a better world, says Elisabeth Wesseling.

IRSCL is an international scholarly organization dedicated to children’s and young adult literature with 360 members from 47 different countries worldwide. Every second year the organization arranges IRSCL Congress, the world’s most international congress within the research field.

Videos of IRSCL members reading the statement in 18 languages

Yes, that’s me reading it in English. (I’m one of the statement’s many co-writers. )

Arabic

Chinese

Danish

Dutch

English

Estonian

Farsi

Finnish

French

German

Italian

Kazakh

Korean

Lamnso

Norwegian

Polish

Russian

Spanish

Swedish

Ukranian

In reading the statement (above) and writing this little blog post, I’m proud to stand with my friends and colleagues around the world. And I’m especially delighted to see them speaking their native languages. When we meet, we converse in English — because English is the “international” language of communication among scholars. So, English-speakers like me have it easy: everyone else speaks my language. But for everyone else, this is of course grossly unfair. I am grateful to them for learning English so that we can share ideas, and participate in a global community. And I thank them for tolerating my general inability to speak their languages.

Reading children’s books about all different people (all types of difference, though in this case, national difference) helps raise a younger generation to be less susceptible to the narrow nationalisms that pervade our political culture. Diverse children’s books work because — as the research of Tali Sharot shows — emotion is more persuasive than reason. They work because, by expanding our emotional life, stories show us how we are connected — offering “a glimpse across the limits of our self,” as Hisham Matar puts it. And yes, yes, I know that white supremacy, xenophobia, and fascistic nationalism are resilient and adaptable — aided, as they are, by white fragility, white innocence, and colonial amnesia. And I know that children’s literature is but one front in a larger battle. But books for young people remain one of the best resources to oppose xenophobia and the structures that sustain it because children’s literature reaches selves still very much in the process of becoming; minds that have not yet been made up; future adults who can learn respect instead of suspicion, understanding instead of fear, and yes, even love.

We need a term to describe the experience of obtaining a new technological item, and then the (guaranteed but never mentioned) troubleshooting and cost that inevitably follows. I propose “upgrade vortex” — upgrade both because this is the catalyst that precipitates the condition (“I need to upgrade my smartphone”) and because spending time in this vortex is an inevitable part of getting the upgrade. I use the word vortex because the problems and tasks whirl around you, threaten to engulf you, but you can ultimately escape them. For example, with the latest iteration of your smart phone, you now need to buy a (more expensive) new plan. Or, you cannot simply transfer your old data and apps to the new tablet because first the new tablet’s system must itself be updated; so, set it up as a new tablet, install the update, and then move your old tablet’s information over. Or the set-up instructions turn out not to work, and so you end up troubleshooting its problems yourself, either via help discussion forums, or the company’s help line. Or you realize you’ve been sent a dud, and need to return it and try again.* And, quite possibly, all of the above. But, eventually, you leave the vortex and enjoy your new piece of technology. Hooray!

Until it’s time to upgrade again. Then,… you re-enter the upgrade vortex.

_____

* If anyone loved Logitech’s ultra-thin keyboard for the iPad (as I did), let me warn you against getting a Logitech ultra-thin keyboard for the iPad 2 Air… because it doesn’t work.

Children’s literature distills experience into concise, often pithy nuggets of wisdom. When you happen upon one such pearl, it often feels as if — for just that moment — the author (and not the narrator or character) is talking directly to you. From time to time, I gather a few such quotations in my irregularly appearing “Commonplace Book” series:

Why was it, she thought, that the most interesting things in the world are always kept from children? Isn’t there some way to force parents to tell the truth? They’re always telling us to tell the truth and then they lie in their teeth.

— Louise Fitzhugh, The Long Secret (1965), p. 127

all stuff about happy endings is lies. The only ending in this world is death. Now that might or might not be happy, but either way, you ain’t ready to die, are you?

It’s hard to explain the terrible things that happened out there. In fact, the more I tell you, the less you will actually understand. Some things in life are like that. You have to find out for yourself. . . .

The mouse and his child, who had learned so much and had prevailed against such overwhelming odds, never could be persuaded to teach a success course. Popular demand was intense, but they steadfastly refused. The whole secret of the thing, they insisted, was simply and at all costs to move steadily ahead, and that, they said, could not be taught.

The professional pseudonym of Theodor Seuss Geisel is Dr. Seuss, and all the English-speaking world pronounced it “Doctor Soose.” If you pronounce it “Doctor Zoice,” you’ll sound like a fool.

It is true that the middle name of Theodor Geisel — “Seuss,” which was also his mother’s maiden name — was pronounced “Zoice” by the family, and by Theodor Geisel himself. So, if you are pronouncing his full given name, saying “Zoice” instead of “Soose” would not be wrong. You’d have to explain the pronunciation to your listener, but you would be pronouncing it as the family did.

However, if you’re referring to the author of books for children, you pronounce it “Doctor Soose.” For his pseudonym, Dr. Seuss accepted this pronunciation of his middle name.

Since you may have arrived at this page from anywhere (and may not be a regular reader of this blog), I should tell you that I’m the author of Dr. Seuss: American Icon (2004) and The Annotated Cat: Under the Hats of Seuss and His Cats (2007). I also wrote the bio. and timeline for Random House’s Seussville website. The beginning of that bio. includes the pronunciation information (“Zoice”), which I learned from Judith and Neil Morgan’s excellent Dr. Seuss and Mr. Geisel (1995). If you read one secondary source about Seuss, their book is the one to read.

What happens to the odd bits of knowledge you accumulate while traveling? Unless you write them down, much vanishes. So, here are a few things I learned while traveling in Switzerland, France, and Norway during the past ten days.

1.The Basilisk originates in Basel, Switzerland. You know the basilisk from Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, and likely also know that Rowling has borrowed the creature from mythology. The mythical beast has its origins in Basel, as a guardian of the city. You can find it on a bridge and in other public places there. One of the city’s radio stations is Radio Basilisk — a discovery which prompted my question to my brother-in-law, Michel… and in turn led to this piece of information.

2.There Are No Trees Above 2000 Meters — in the Swiss Alps. (The tree line varies from place to place, climate to climate.) While hiking down from above the tree line, Michel mentioned this as we approached a few hearty trees. Why are there no trees above that height? I’ve looked it up, and I discover that there are many possible causes, including rainfall, acidity of the soil, and tolerance to draught and cold.

3. Your First Language Is a Foreign Language. My sixteen-month-old niece Emily can understand more than she can speak — which, my sister points out, is true of anyone learning a language. You always understand more than you’re able to express.

4. “Quisling” Is More Than a Synonym for “Traitor.” Vidkun Quisling was the collaborationist ruler of occupied Norway during the Second World War. A few months after the end of the European war, he was convicted of war crimes and executed. In what might be described as poetic justice, Quisling’s house now houses Oslo’s Center for Studies of Holocaust and Religious Minorities.

5. Norway Elected Its Monarchy in 1905. Usually one thinks of countries either curtailing the power of monarchy or, via a revolution, overthrowing the monarchy. Not Norway. When they gained their independence, they voted for a new monarchy — having abandoned the old one when they left their alliance with Sweden. Indeed, Prince Carl of Denmark only agreed to become king if the people of Norway held an election. They did, and voted him in. He took the Norwegian name Haakon, becoming King Haakon VII. During the Second World War, after the Germans invaded, he told the Norwegian government that if they were to cooperate with the Nazis, then he would abdicate. They unanimously voted not to cooperate, and King Haakon became a strong symbol for the Norwegian resistance.

6. The Scandinavian Languages Were Once All the Same Language. About 1000 years ago, they began developing in different directions — Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, Icelandic, Faroese. One result is that people from different countries in the region can understand one another even if they don’t all speak precisely the “same” language.

7. The Root of Metaphor Means Carry Over.Mavis Reimer pointed this out in her paper — the Latin metaphora means “carrying over.”

8. Stian Hole’s Garmann books offer series of sharp vignettes from the perspective of their grade-school-age protagonist. They are not so much narratives as they are glimpses into his interior life, presented via collages that amplify his emotional experience. There’s something about the juxtapositions that recal the efforts of the twentieth-century avant-garde, especially John Heartfield. One long-term result of the conference — I hope — will be me learning more about Scandinavian children’s literature.

My essay appeared in The Ivory Tower and Harry Potter, edited by Lana Whited and published in 2002 by the University of Missouri Press. In late May, University of Missouri president Tim Wolfe announced the closing of the press, a non-profit enterprise which operated with a $400,000 annual subsidy — which, to place that in perspective, is $2.1 million less than the head football coach’s annual salary. (For further perspective, the university last month announced a $72 million upgrade to its athletic facilities.) Mr. Wolfe fired the staff, and — following public outcry and authors leaving the press — said that no, he wasn’t really closing the press, but reinventing it … without consulting any of the current staff (who had been fired). So, until Mr. Wolfe invents another rationale for shutting it down, an organization named “the University of Missouri Press” will exist. The name and geographic location are all it shares with the entity that published The Ivory Tower and Harry Poter. In its belated announcement (in a release thick with corporate doublespeak), the faux University of Missouri Press seems an afterthought designed to minimize all the negative PR that met the original press’s closure. (Mr. Wolfe seems to be saying: Did I say closing the press? No, not closing, exactly — er,… reinventing! I meant reinventing! See! The press is stil here!)

However, in reality, the publisher of works by Langston Hughes, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Mark Twain is closing. The future of any book under the “University of Missouri Press” imprint (or “brand,” as the organization now calls it) is doubtful. So, I thought I would make my sole work published by this press available for free, right here. (A pdf is below.)

Since that piece has been in print for a decade, of greater interest may be this page-by-page comparison of the UK and US editions of the first three Harry Potter books, a comparison I am here making publicly available for the first time. My hope is that others may benefit from this without having to go through the labor that I did — treating the texts like variants of a medieval manuscript, and making careful notes on the differences.

I intended to do a complete page-by-page comparison of the first four (book five didn’t appear until the year after the article’s publication), but my side-by-side readings of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire found far fewer differences — indeed, some words changed in earlier books were not changed in Goblet of Fire‘s US edition. As this was proving less interesting (and Goblet is much longer!), I did not make a complete list of the differences between the editions of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.

A note on my notes: “in verse” means that the text was formatted as verse, but not that it is in fact poetry. The books used are the original UK and US editions of the Harry Potter books (corrections have been made in subsequent editions).

“Down in the stands, Dean Thomas was yelling, ‘Send him off, ref! Red card!’‘What are you talking about, Dean?’ said Ron.‘Red card!’ said Dean furiously. ‘In soccer you get shown the red card and you’re out of the game!’‘But this isn’t soccer, Dean,’ Ron reminded him.” (188)

“‘Wish they could see famous Harry Potter now,’ he thought savagely” (13)

“Wish they could see famous Harry Potter now, he thought savagely” (10)

“fruitbats” (22)

“fruit bats” (22)

“a bowl of tinned soup” (22)

“a bowl of canned soup” (22)

“stone cold” (22)

“stone-cold” (22)

“You Know Who (27 & passim)

“You-Know-Who” (29 & passim)

“one man ended up in hospital” (29)

“one man ended up in the hospital” (31)

“Dad’s mad about everything to do with” (29)

“Dad’s crazy about everything to do with” (31)

“peering through the windscreen” (29)

“peering through the windshield” (31)

“jumble of wellington boots” (29)

“jumble of rubber boots” (32)

“‘It’s brilliant,’ said Harry” (29)

“‘It’s wonderful,’ said Harry” (32)

“I sleep at the –” (30)

“I sleep at the — at the top –” (32)

quotation marks for items on clock (31)

Italics for items on clock (34)

“at the washing-up in the sink, which began to clean itself” (31)

“at the dishes in the sink, which began to clean themselves” (34)

typo: “Geoge groaned” (32)

“George groaned” (35)

“Mum fancies him” (32)

“Mum fancies him” (36)

“little fat Father Christmases with fishing rods”(33)

“little fat Santa Clauses with fishing rods” (36)

“nothing like Father Christmas” (33)

“nothing like Santa Claus” (37)

“shaking it off until –” (33)

“shaking it off — until –” (37)

“of frogspawn on the window-sill” (35)

“of frog spawn on the windowsill” (40)

“still in their pyjamas” (38)

“still in their pajamas” (43)

“And mind you get out at the right grate” (41)throughout, ellipses (41-42)

“And be sure to get out at the right grate” (41)throughout, dashes (49)

“and felt his glasses shatter” (42)

“and felt the bridge of his glasses snap” (49)

“pulled the doors to” (42)

“pulled the doors closed” (50)

“business elsewhere today.” (44)

“business elsewhere today –” (52)

“Come, Draco!” (44)

“Come, Draco –” (53)

“Molly’s frantic — she’s coming now.” (46)

“Molly’s frantic — she’s coming now –” (55)

“Brilliant!” (46)

“Excellent!” (55)

“second-hand robe shop” (47)

“secondhand robe shop” (57)

“strawberry and peanut butter ice-creams” (48)

“strawberry-and-peanut-butter ice creams” (58)

“broken wands, wonky brass scales” (48)

“broken wands, lopsided brass scales” (58)

“mind the books, now” (48)

“mind the books, now” (59) [stays the same]

“He and his school fellows” (50)

“He and his schoolmates” (60)

“to pay for that lot” (50)

“to pay for all those” (61)

“opened the boot” (53)

“opened the trunk” (66)

“trolleys for their trunks” (54)

“trolleys for their trunks” (67) [stays the same]

“‘if it’s a real emergency, section nineteen or something of the Restriction of Thingy …’Harry’s feeling of panic turned suddenly to excitement” (56)

“‘if it’s a real emergency, section nineteen or something of the Restriction of Thingy –’‘But your Mum and Dad…’ said Harry, pushing against the barrier again in the vain hope that it would give way. ‘How will they get home?’‘They don’t need the car!’ said Ron impatiently. ‘They know how to Apparate! You know, just vanish and reappear at home! They only bother with Floo powder and the car because we’re all underage and we’re not allowed to Apparate yet….’”Harry’s feeling of panic turned suddenly to excitement” (69)

“wheeling his trolley around” (56)

“wheeling his trolley around” (69) [stays the same]

“villages with tiny toy churches and a great city alive with cars like multi-colored ants” (57)

“a great city alive with cars like multicolored ants, villages with tiny toy churches” (72)

“pulled off their jumpers” (57)

“pulled off their sweaters” (72)

“Harry pulled his jumper back on” (58)

“Harry pulled his sweater back on” (73)

“windscreen wipers” (58)

“windshield wipers” (73)

“MIND THAT TREE!” (59)

“WATCH OUT FOR THAT TREE!” (74)

“crumpled bonnet” (59)

“crumpled hood” (74)

“he had hit the windscreen” (59)

“he had hit the windshield” (74)

“luggage from the boot” (60)

“luggage from the trunk” (75)

“‘Brilliant!’ yelled Lee Jordan” (66)

“‘Brilliant!’ yelled Lee Jordan” (84) [stays same]

“Good on you” (66)

“Good for you” (84)

“Post’s due any minute” (68)

“Mail’s due any minute” (86)

“My Gran sent me one” (69)

“My gran sent me one” (87)

“ENQUIRY” (69), “enquiry” (70)

“INQUIRY” (88), “inquiry” (89)

“telephone box by a werewolf” (73)

“telephone booth” (94)

“Spellotaped wand” (76)

“Spellotaped wand” (97) [same in both]

“double portrait, can’t say fairer than that” (76)

“double portrait, can’t do better than that” (98)

“diagram of a Quidditch pitch” (83)

“diagram of a Quidditch field” (108)

“back on the Quidditch pitch” (84)

“back on the Quidditch field” (109)

“walking on to the pitch” (85)

“walking on to the field” (110)

“But I booked the pitch!” (85)

“But I booked the field!” (110)

“today on the Quidditch pitch” (85)

“today on the Quidditch field” (111)

“A pitch invasion” (86)

“A field invasion” (111)

“Common blood. It’s mad” (89)

“Common blood. It’s ridiculous” (116)

“Oh no — can’t I go and do the trophy room” (91)

“Oh n — can’t I go and do the trophy room” (119)

“Harry didn’t fancy his shepherd’s pie” (91)

“Harry didn’t enjoy his shepherd’s pie” (119)

“Ah, here’s the scallywag!” (92)

“Ah, here’s the scalawag!” (119)

“pulled on his pyjamas” (93)

“pulled on his pajamas” (121)

“Took ages to shift the slime” (93)

“Took ages to get the slime off” (121)

“who had been looking peaky” (94)

“who had been looking pale” (122)

“shooting through the air like jump jets” (94)

“shooting through the air like missiles” (123)

Kwikspell letter (97)

Kwikspell letter in cursive (127)

“he spluttered” (98)

“he sputtered” (128)

“Hallowe’en” (100 & passim)

“Halloween” (131 & passim)

“trying to go to the loo” (101)

“trying to have a pee” (133)

“You’ve missed out ‘spotty’” (103)

“You’ve forgotten pimply” (135)

“yelling, ‘Spotty! Spotty!’” (103)

“yelling, “Pimply! Pimply!” (135)

“remove his hairnet” (108)

“remove his hair net” (142)

“the copies of Hogwarts: A History” (112)

“the copies of Hogwarts, A History” (147)

quotation marks for italicized words of SH (116)

italicized words of Sorting Hat (153)

“into a dirty great spider” (117)

“into a great big filthy spider” (155)

“doors to the cubicles” (118)

“doors to the stalls” (155)

“floating on the cistern of the toilet” (118)

“floating above the tank of the toilet” (156)

“we’ve got what we needed.” (123)

“we’ve got what we needed –” (163)

“student in the year” (123)

“student of the year” (163)

Madam Pince sentence at top of 124

Madam Pince sentence part of same para (163).

“in her cubicle” (124)

“in her stall” (164)

“But not toenails, OK?” (125)

“But not toenails, okay?” (166)

“crowd to speed them upwards” (126)

“crowd to speed them upward” (167)

“careering out of Harry’s way” (129)

“careening out of Harry’s way” (171)

“Harry a pair of pyjamas” (131)

“Harry a pair of pajamas” (174)

“He Who Must Not Be Named” (133)

“He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named” (178)

“squeezing into the cubicle” (138)

“squeezing into the stall” (183)

“Bicorn horn and the Boomslang skin” (139)

“bicorn horn and the boomslang skin” (186)

“faster than you could say ‘unfair’” (140)

“faster than you could say ‘Unfair’” (186)

“stopping a dirty great snake biting Justin’s head off” (147)

“stopping a massive snake from biting off Justin’s head” (196)

“‘Sherbet lemon!’ she said. This was” (152)

“‘Lemon drop!’ she said. This was” (204)

“brass knocker in the shape of a griffon” (153)

“brass knocker in the shape of a griffin” (204)

“put him in the right house.” (154)

“put him in the right House –” (206)

“in the high-backed chair behind the desk” (156)

“in the high chair behind the desk” (208)

“there isn’t anything, Professor.” (157)

“there isn’t anything, Professor….” (209)

“a new, hand-knitted jumper” (159)

“a new, hand-knitted sweater” (212)

“Crabbe and Goyle-sized feet” (161)

“Crabbe- and Goyle-size feet” (213)

“of the bubbling, treacle-thick potion” (161)

“of the bubbling, glutinous potion” (215)

“the khaki color of a bogey” (161)

“the khaki color of a booger” (216)

“ENQUIRY AT THE MINISTRY” (165)

“INQUIRY AT THE MINISTRY” (221)

“bearing its Out Of Order sign” (171)

“bearing its out of order sign” (229)

“before I came down hard on them” (176)

“before I came down hard on him” (235)

“seemed to have come over rather giggly” (176)

“seemed to have been overcome with giggles”(236)

“ink bottle smashed over the lot” (177)

“ink bottle smashed over everything” (237)

“OK” (180)

“OK” (242) [stays same b/c of previous line]

“… If it all stopped …” (182)

“– if it all stopped –” (244)

“who asked him to grass on Hagrid” (185)

“who asked him to squeal on Hagrid” (250)

“if he was rubbish at them” (187)

“if he was lousy at them” (252)

“Headmaster was here” (194)

“headmaster was here” (262)

“There’ll be killin’s next!” (195)

“There’ll be killin’ next!” (263)

“any — ah — ‘killin’s’” (195)

“any — ah — killins.” (264)

“about a fortnight after Dumbledore” (198)

“about two weeks after Dumbledore” (266)

“and off they went, crocodile fashion, with Harry, Ron, and Dean” (198-99)

“and off they marched, with Harry, Ron, and Dean” (267)

“swallowed hard and looked sideways” (200)

“swallowed hard, and looked sideways” (270)

“its headlamps ablaze” (203)

“its headlights ablaze” (274)

“worst scene he had ever clapped eyes upon” (204)

“worst scene he had ever laid eyes on” (276)

“but from respect of Hagrid” (206)

“but out of respect for Hagrid” (278)

“Harry saw the wing mirror snap off” (207)

“Harry saw the side mirror snap off” (280)

“nearly thrown into the windscreen” (207)

“nearly thrown into the windshield” (280)

“and I trust you are all revising hard” (210)

“and I trust you are all studying hard” (284)

“close your eyes straight away” (222)

“close your eyes right away” (302)

“can carry round in my pocket” (228)

“can carry around in my pocket” (310)

“forbidden forest” (230)

“Forbidden Forest” (311)

Riddle’s screams italicized (235)

Riddle’s screams italicized & in all caps (319, 320)

“You were brilliant, Fawkes” (236)

“You were fantastic, Fawkes” (321)

“There has been no lasting harm done” (243)

“There has been no lasting harm done, Ginny” (330)

“I said, come!” (248)

“I said, come” (338)

Prisoner of Azkaban

Prisoner of Azkaban

“Owl Post” (7)

“Owl Post” (1) [same in both]

“a torch in one hand” (7)

“a flashlight in one hand” (1)

“(A History of Magic, by Adalbert Waffling)” (7)[typo — see page 52, book 1]

“(A History of Magicby Bathlida Bagshot)” (1)[Bloomsbury has a typo — see page 66, book 1]

“moved his torch closer to the book” (7)

“moved his flashlight closer to the book” (1)

“summer holidays” (7, 8)

“summer holidays” (1, 2) [same in both]

“at the start of the summer holidays” (8)

“at the start of the summer break” (3)

“already in a bad mood with him, all because he’d received a telephone call from a fellow wizard one week into the school holidays” (8)

“already in an especially bad mood with him, all because he’d received a telephone call from a fellow wizard one week into the school vacation”(3)

“‘Are you mad?’ said Harry, his voice easily as croaky as Sirius’” (278)

“‘Are you insane?’ said Harry, his voice easily as croaky as Black’s’” (379)

“‘Run,’ Sirius whispered. ‘Run! Now!’” (279)

“‘Run,’ Sirius whispered. ‘Run. Now.’” (380)

“Sirius, he’s gone” (279)

“Sirius, he’s gone” (381) [same]

“of his paws was fading to silence” (279)

“of his paws faded to silence” (382)

“Face down, too weak to move, sick and shaking, Harry opened his eyes. The blinding light was illuminating the grass around him … The screaming had stopped, the cold was ebbing away …Something was driving the Dementors back … it was circling around him and Sirius and Hermione … the rattling, sucking sounds of the Dementors were fading. They were leaving … the air was warm again …” (282)

“Facedown, too weak to move, sick and shaking, Harry opened his eyes. The dementor must have released him. The blinding light was illuminating the grass around him…. The screaming had stopped, the cold was ebbing away….Something was driving the dementors back … it was circling around him and Sirius and Hermione…. They were leaving…. The air was warm again….” (385)

“saw an animal amidst the light” (282)

“saw an animal amid the light” (385)

“into Buckbeak’s fierce orange eye once more” (293)

“into Buckbeak’s fierce orange eyes once more” (400)

“fumble with the rope tying Buckbeak to the fence” (293)

“fumble with the knot of rope tying Buckbeak to the fence” (400)

“‘I know it sounds mad,’ said Harry” (298)

“‘I know it sounds crazy,’ said Harry” (407)

“bouncing along the corridor in tearing spirits, laughing his head off” (304)

“bouncing along the corridor in boisterous good spirits, laughing his head off” (417)

“Says he can’ risk it happenin’ again” (308)

“Says he can’t risk it happenin’ again” (422)

“Last night … I thought it was my dad” (311)

“I thought it was my dad” (427)

“So you did see your father last night, Harry … you found him inside yourself” (312)

“You know, Harry, in a way, you did see your father last night…. You found him inside yourself” (428)

In Chapter 22, “Sirius” is used

In Chapter 22, “Sirius” remains “Sirius” [same]

“could increase, but it certainly had done” (313)

“could increase, but it certainly had” (429)

“carrying a letter which was much too big” (314)

“carrying a letter that was much too big” (431)

Sirius’ letter in italics (315-16)

Sirius’ letter in italics (243-33) [same]

“in case this falls into the wrong hands” (315)

“in case this owl falls into the wrong hands” (432)

“some doubt about the owl’s reliability” (315)

“some doubt about his reliability” (432)

“from Gringotts vault number seven hundred and eleven — my own” (315)

“from my own Gringotts vault” (433)

“bottle of hot Butterbeer in one go” (316)

“bottle of hot Butterbeer in one gulp” (433)

“‘What d’you reckon?’ Ron asked the cat” (316)

“‘What do’you reckon?’ Ron asked the cat” (434)

Goblet of Fire [a partial list]

Goblet of Fire [a partial list]

“great bullying git” (51)

“great bullying git” (53) [same]

“‘Oh,’ said Ron, cottoning on.” (51)

“‘Oh,’ said Ron, cottoning on.” (54) [same]

“a group of middle-aged American witches sat gossiping happily beneath a spangled banner stretched between their tents which read: The Salem Witches’ Institute” (76)

“a group of middle-aged American witches sat gossiping happily beneath a spangled banner stretched between their tents that read: the salem witches’ institute” (82)

“he heard an intruder in his yard. Says they were creeping towards the house, but they were ambushed by his dustbins” (142)

“he heard an intruder in his yard. Says he was creeping toward the house, but was ambushed by his dustbins” (159)

“What did the dustbins do?” (142)

“What did the dustbins do?” (159) [same]

“what are exploding dustbins worth?” (142)

“what are exploding dustbins worth?”(160) [same]

“Spotted dick, look! Chocolate gateau!” (162)

“Spotted dick, look! Chocolate gateau!”(183) [same]

“through the doorway to the girls’ dormitories” (169)

“through the doorway to the girls’ dormitory” (191)

“of West Ham football team” (169)

“of the West Ham football team” (191) [“football” remains same; “the” is added]

One of the many pleasures of Edmund de Waal’s The Hare with Amber Eyes: A Hidden Inheritance (2010) is its evocation of the thrill of research. As he traces the history of his family’s netsuke (small Japanese ivory and wood carvings), de Waal describes great-great-great grandfather Charles Ephrussi’s art-collecting in nineteenth-century Paris as “‘vagabonding’ … done with real intensity”:

Vagabonding was his word. It sounds recreational rather than diligent or professional…. But it does get the pleasure of the searching right, the way you lose your sense of time when you are researching, are pulled on by whims as much as by intent. It makes me think of the rummaging that I am doing through his life as I track the netsuke, the noting of other people’s annotations in the margins. I vagabond in libraries, trace where he went and why. I follow the leads of whom he knew, whom he wrote about, whose pictures he bought. In Paris I go and stand outside his old offices in the rue Favart in the summer rain like some sad art-historical gumshoe and wait to see who comes out. (72-73)

That’s exactly right. Writing a biography — or, truly, intense research of any kind — is detective work. It’s extremely absorbing, getting a lead, following it to a new source, finding connections between lives and ideas. You are on a quest, and you must keep going until you finish!

But dedication to the quest also takes its toll. As Charles McGrath reports in today’s New York Times Magazine profile of master biographer Robert Caro, researching and writing the third volume of The Years of Lyndon Johnson had taken so long that Caro and his wife went broke. She sold their Long Island home, found them a cheaper apartment in the Bronx, and got a teaching job to help pay the bills. The biographer — obsessive, driven, seeking every last detail — often depends upon a patient, supportive spouse. It’s no coincidence that my forthcoming biography, Crockett Johnson and Ruth Krauss: How an Unlikely Couple Found Love, Dodged the FBI, and Transformed Children’s Literature, is dedicated to Karin. Who else but one’s partner would put up with such fanatical devotion to a book?

This process recalls a line in a recent Times Higher Education piece on academics: “the idealised academic has no ties or responsibilities to limit their capacity to work.” This is equally true of the biographer. For both the professor and the biographer, there is no boundary between life and work. Your life is your work and your work is your life. Or, in the case of the biographer, your work is someone else’s life.

I’m not arguing that one’s work should be all-consuming, though I would note that Caro’s work on LBJ and Edmund de Waal’s absorbing family history are both excellent because each writer is so very thorough, obsessive, and meticulous — in both the research and the writing. McGrath notes that Caro and his editor Robert Gottlieb “argue about length, but they also argue about prose, even about punctuation.” As Gottlieb says,

You know that insane old expression, “The quality of his defect is the defect of his quality,” or something like that? That’s really true of Bob [Caro]. What makes him such a genius of research and reliability is that everything is of exactly the same importance to him. The smallest thing is as consequential as the biggest. A semicolon matters as much as, I don’t know, whether Johnson was gay.

Beyond providing a helpful context for my own battles with Walter (my editor for the bio), this explains my own process to me. It’s not just about perfectionism. It’s about getting it right. And everything matters: Structure, word choice, punctuation, which detail gets retained and which one gets cut.

Caro had to cut 350,000 words from The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York. He tells McGrath sadly, “There were things cut out of ‘The Power Broker’ that should not have been cut out,” and then shows him “his personal copy of the book, dog-eared and broken-backed, filled with underlining and corrections written in between the lines. Caro is a little like Balzac, who kept fussing over his books even after they were published.” It would be an understatement to say I can relate to that. Though I had to cut far fewer words from my biography of Crockett Johnson and Ruth Krauss, there were things cut that should not have been cut. And I’ve seriously thought of marking up a published copy (due this September) to fix those omissions, or infelicitous changes in phrasing introduced during the copyediting (the copyeditor was unusually fond of passive voice). In looking at the proofs, I thought: Why did I allow the excision of Johnson’s favorite book, George and Weedon Grossmith’s The Diary of a Nobody? My main reason was (and is) the fact that I can include it — and its satirical style’s influence on Johnson — in one of the afterwords for the 5-volume The Complete Barnaby. It’s hard to let this go, and I’m fortunate to have the luxury to hang on a bit longer. As de Waal writes near the end of his book, he has the feeling that he should “Just go home and leave these stories be. But leaving be is hard” (346).

Most of all, when reading Caro or de Waal, I think: my God, I wish I could write like them! I’m not in their league. Indeed, my league couldn’t find their league on a map. Describing the motorcade in Dallas on 22 November 1963, Caro writes,

Lyndon Johnson was far enough behind the Presidential limousine that the cheering for the Kennedys and the Connallys — for John Connally, some of it, for his onetime assistant, who had become his rival in Texas — was dying down by the time his car passed, and most of the faces in the crowd were still turned to follow the Presidential car as it drove away from them. So that, as Lyndon Johnson’s car made its slow way down the canyon, what lay ahead of him in that motorcade could, in a way, have been seen by someone observing his life as a foretaste of what might lie ahead if he remained Vice-President: five years of trailing behind another man, humiliated, almost ignored, and powerless. The Vice-Presidency, “filled with trips . . . chauffeurs, men saluting, people clapping . . . in the end it is nothing,” as he later put it. (“The Transition,” The New Yorker, 2 Apr. 2012, 35-36)

Masterful. I favor tighter sentences myself, but his epic style works well with his subject. We readers know that, in a few moments, President Kennedy will be assassinated; later that day, LBJ will become president. And Caro knows we know. So, he allows our knowledge to inform the scene, and instead focuses on creating Johnson’s (likely) experience at that moment — enduring the relative powerlessness of the Vice-Presidency.

De Waal writes lyrically and with great insight into what it means to be human. Early in the book, he observes, “Melancholy, I think, is a sort of default vagueness, a get-out clause, a smothering lack of focus. And this netsuke is a small, tough explosion of exactitude. It deserves this kind of exactitude in return” (16). Later, he considers his great grandparents, in Vienna, in the early 19-teens. The “more assimilated Jews [the great grandparents] worry about these newcomers,” he writes: “their speech and dress and customs are not aligned to the Bildung of the Viennese. There is anxiety that they will impede assimilation.” At the end of this paragraph, de Waal concludes, “Maybe, I think, this is anxiety from the recently arrived towards the very newly arrived. They are still in transit” (188). Describing his grandmother’s decision to burn letters from her mother (in part, he suggests, because they may mention the great-grandmother’s lovers), de Waal confesses, “There is something about burning all of those letters that gives me pause: why should everything be made clear and brought into the light? Why keep things, archive your intimacies? … Just because you have it does not mean you have to pass it on. Losing things can sometimes gain a space in which to live” (347).

This is the big conundrum of the researcher. To throw out or to keep? I tend towards the latter. (If I throw it out, I might need it later.) But de Waal is right: being encumbered by research (books, articles, photocopies from archives, etc.) grants one little space to live. Further, the time required to sustain research affords little time to winnow out and throw out. It’s hard to manage your archives and move forward with the next project — to say nothing of grading, teaching, editing, committee work, or, say, having a life.

So we keep things. However, as Robin Bernstein observes in her Racial Innocence: Performing American Childhood from Slavery to Civil Rights (2011), things are bearers of stories. And, as de Waal notes, “It is not just that things carry stories with them. Stories are a kind of thing, too” (349).

They are. And they’ve been on my mind because — for any of my readers who may be in or near Manhattan Kansas next week — I’m giving a talk on this very subject, at 4pm, Tuesday, April 24, in the K-Sate Student Union’s Little Theatre. The title is “Collaborating with the FBI, Reading Other People’s Mail and Taking Children’s Literature Seriously: Tales from Writing the Biography of Crockett Johnson and Ruth Krauss.” Free and open to the public. My talk will run about half an hour. There’ll be lots of stories.

In North America, those of us who are teachers or students are thinking about school. In August and September, the summer holidays end, and a new term begins. To commemorate (or commiserate?) this season last year, I posted Dark Sarcasm in the Classroom: A Back-to-School Mix. This year, I’m posting a mix about language. Enjoy!

Leading the mix itself and its “ABC” section (which concludes with track 7), it’s the vocalese trio of Dave Lambert (1917-1966), Jon Hendricks (b. 1921), and Annie Ross (b. 1930). From their album Lambert, Hendricks & Ross! (a.k.a. The Hottest New Group in Jazz!).

“West Xylophone, Yemen, Zimbabwe!” They Might Be Giants’ alphabetical trip around the world, from their second children’s album, Here Come the ABC’s. If I weren’t restricting myself to one song per artist, I would definitely include other TMBG songs in this mix.

I don’t know much about Gordon MacRae, but Jo Stafford was a popular vocalist in the 1940s and 1950s. With husband Paul Weston, she was also half of the deliberately off-key comedy duo Jonathan and Darlene Edwards. This song appears on the compilation Small Fry: Capitol Sings Kids’ Songs for Grown-Ups.

Steven Page mocks Ed Robertson’s attempts to write a new alphabet song. Appears on Snack Time!, the first BNL children’s record. Word is that the group (now sans Page) is working on a second children’s record.

“These are the books I like to read / Because reading suits me. / With every page I turn, the pictures coma alive. / Imagination takes what’s possible to new heights.” And the song name-checks both Harold and the Purple Crayon and Green Eggs and Ham! From Frances England‘s Fascinating Creatures.

The first of 6 songs from Schoolhouse Rock on this mix. Since I encounter students (yes, college students) who do not know what a noun is, I often wish that these were still airing during Saturday morning cartoons.

“Hey, you know what? A round cookie with one bite out of it looks like a ‘C.’ A round doughnut with one bite of it also looks like a ‘C.’ But it is not as good as a cookie. Oh, and the moon sometimes looks like a ‘C,’ but you can’t eat that.” Words of wisdom from the Cookie Monster. The song appears on Songs from the Street: 35 Years of Music, and (I expect) on many other compilations.

A song of malapropisms, a term named for Mrs. Malaprop, a character in Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s The Rivals (1775). This particular song, however, is from a different play — the Broadway musical Top Banana (1952), with music and lyrics by Johnny Mercer and book by Hy Kraft.

From the band’s debut — a 6-song cassette. This Canadian quartet were my favorite group of the 1990s. Their live shows were something to behold. Below, an example of their improvisational stage shows. The song itself starts at around 4:30. Warning to our underage listeners: in the live performance below, Jian Ghomeshi drops a bunch of F-bombs at around 7:40 or so. The audio-only version (above) is clean.

The jump blues of Louis Jordan (and others) helped create the sound that would become known as “rock ‘n’ roll.” From The Best of Louis Jordan (MCA Records, 1975), a solid single-CD collection of his work.

The final song in our “nursery rhyme” sequence appears on A Good Man Is Hard to Find: The Middle Years Part Two (1938-1940). One in Bluebird/RCA’s fantastic series of Fats Waller CDs — now, alas, out of print.

The song for which Barenaked Ladies named their 2000 album appears on Ken Nordine’s spoken-word/jazz classic, Colors. I’ve placed it here because, like nursery rhymes and playground chants, the song is as much about the sound of words as what they mean. And, linking us to the next song, the theme of the record is Nordine trying to describe colors — the sort of task for which one might want to unpack some adjectives….

The mix concludes with four Schoolhouse Rock songs. I generally don’t like to use so many songs from the same record (in this case, a 4-CD set), but since each track is performed by a different artist, I’ve given myself a pass here. Here, the late Blossom Dearie — of “Peel Me a Grape” fame — teaches us about the adjective.

32) Verb: That’s What’s Happening Zachary Sanders (1974) 3:00
“A verb tells it like it is.” In addition to teaching us about verbs, this cartoon features an African-American superhero — not a common sight on television either in the early 1970s or today. Zachary Sanders also sang the Schoolhouse Rock song “Electricity, Electricity.”

Last Friday, in my English 703: Critical Approaches to Children’s Literature class, the students and I spent 5 minutes talking nonsense. We’d been reading theories of nonsense, and Lewis Carroll’s Alice books — I thought it would be both fun and educational to put those theories into practice.

So, based on our readings of Tigges, Anderson and Apseloff, and others, I had them enumerate some of nonsense’s formal qualities: language as game; use of puns, double meanings, inversions, opposites; playing on idiomatic language, taking figurative language literally; and so on. Then, we prepared for the nonsense chat. I set it up as a conversation with me on the one side, and a student on the other. These were the rules: (1) I asked them to raise their hands when they felt they had an entry point. (2) When the student could sustain the nonsensical banter no longer, she or he was to pass off the conversation to the next person whose hand was raised.

If speaking nonsense isn’t your forte, you could modify the above exercise as follows: make the teacher both referee and equal participant (i.e., not obliged to hold up the entire side of the conversation). Speaking nonsense comes quite easily to me. (Try to contain your surprise.) You see, my brain naturally comes up with multiple options in reply. Most of the time, I chose the “sense” reply, and ignore the other options. If I’m in a social situation, I listen to the other options, and will move back and forth between humor and seriousness, depending on my audience.

Anyway, back to class. We sustained the conversation for 5 minutes, no problem. (I wish we’d recorded it — some of our exchanges were quite funny.) After we finished, I asked them about the experience of talking nonsense. What had they learned? This conversation was interesting. As one student point out, it’s using language not to communicate, but to compete. As another said, it’s an isolating experience — echoing a comment from nonsense scholar Wim Tigges, whose “An Anatomy of Nonsense” (1987) we read. Speaking nonsense does, of course, heighten one’s awareness of language’s formal qualities: in order to speak it, you sustain syntax in order to subvert sense. As Tigges puts it, “nonsense is not the absence of sense, but rather a frustration of expectations about sense” (25). It plays on the tension between meaning and its absence.

I love to discover pedagogical “stunts” that work (I dislike such stunts for their own sake). This, I am pleased to report, was a useful exercise. It educated while it entertained.

Oh, I could do this all day. Except that, well, I couldn’t — too many other things to do. So, here are ten more. And then I’ll stop. For now.

“Welcome!” he said. “Welcome to a new year at Hogwarts! Before we begin our banquet, I would like to say a few words. And here they are: Nitwit! Blubber! Oddment! Tweak!
“Thank you!”
— J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (1998; in the UK and the rest of the world, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone [1997]), p. 123.

I have often thought that if the people who write books for children knew a little more it would be better. I shall not tell you anything about us except what I should like to know about if I was reading the story and you were writing it. Albert’s uncle says I ought to have put this in the preface, but I never read prefaces, and it is not much good writing things just for people to skip. I wonder other authors have never thought of this.
— Oswald Bastable, in E. Nesbit, The Story of the Treasure Seekers (1899), Chapter 2.

I see the Master as a man having terrible choices to make; whatever he chooses will do harm, but maybe if he does the right thing, a little less harm will come about than if he chooses wrong. God preserve me from having to make that sort of choice.
— John Faa, in Philip Pullman, The Golden Compass (1995; Northern Lights in the UK), p. 128.

“Now we have no more cookies to eat,” said Toad sadly. “Not even one.”
“Yes,” said Frog, “but we have lots and lots of will power.”
“You may keep it all, Frog,” said Toad. “I am going home now to bake a cake.”
— Arnold Lobel, “Cookies,” Frog and Toad Together (1972)

His mind is concrete and fastidious,His nose is remarkably big;
His visage is more or less hideous,
His beard it resembles a wig.
— Edward Lear, “How pleasant to know Mr. Lear!”

Dmitri hardly had a chance to relax before somebody recognized him.
“Aren’t you Barney Abernathy from Cincinnati?”
“No!” said Dmitri. “I’m Dmitri the astronaut.”
“Oh,” said the man,” I’m so sorry.”
— Jon Agee, Dmitri the Astronaut (1996)

“You once told me that fish are meant for fish,” Bagley said. “Do you still think that?”
“Well, I’m not really sure anymore,” she confessed, looking up again. “The truth is, I was just spouting what I’d always heard. It’s the inside of things that matters. Not the outside. I see that now.”
— Tor Seidler, The Wainscot Weasel (1993)

Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.

Hold fast to dreams
For when dreams go
Life is a barren field
Frozen with snow.
— Langston Hughes, The Dream Keeper and Other Poems (1932)

A dream is to look at the night and see things.
— Ruth Krauss, A Hole Is to Dig (1952)

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